Background

Dr. John V. Conte is a recognized international authority in the surgical treatment of congestive heart failure. Under his leadership, Johns Hopkins Hospital developed one of the nation’s leading programs in mechanical circulatory support. He led Hopkins’ participation in all of the major contemporary clinical studies of left ventricular assist devices (LVAD) and artificial hearts. He also developed the program in Surgical Ventricular Restoration/Remodeling (SVR) and coronary artery surgery in patients with significant post infarction cardiac dysfunction, about which he has written extensively and has an international reputation.

Dr. Conte is a graduate of Providence College and Georgetown University School of Medicine. He trained in general surgery at Georgetown and cardiac surgery at Stanford University. Dr. Conte joined the faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1998. He was recruited from the University of Maryland, where he founded and led the Heart and Lung Transplant programs from 1995 to 1998. He took over leadership of the Heart Transplantation program from Dr William Baumgartner, the program’s founder, and directed the program for 12 years. He also became the director of the Lung Transplant program. Both programs enjoyed excellent clinical and academic productivity.

Dr. Conte’s clinical practice encompasses the full range of adult cardiac surgery with an emphasis on minimally invasive mitral and aortic valve surgery as well as complex reoperative surgery. In partnership with Dr. John Resar, Dr. Conte has led the Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) program and played a leading role in several major studies, publishing extensively in this emerging field. The Hopkins program is one of the few in the country with training programs for Cardiac Surgery and Cardiology fellows in TAVR and structural heart diseases.

Dr. Conte has played an active role in the several national and international societies including the Society of Thoracic Surgeon, the American Heart Association and the American Association for Thoracic Surgery. He is passionate about teaching and has taught and mentored countless students, residents and fellows. Dr. Conte is an active participant in the Hopkins Cardiac Surgery Residency Program and runs the Advanced Cardiac Surgery Fellowship. He is an educational innovator and developed the first Cardiac Surgery Intensive Care Fellowship in the country in 2008.

Dr. Conte has been actively involved in laboratory and clinical investigation his entire career, receiving numerous research grants and participating in many clinical trials. His research interests have closely paralleled his clinical interests: end stage heart and lung disease as well as minimally invasive surgical techniques and quality assurance and outcomes. In 2012 he founded, the Maryland Cardiac Surgery Quality Initiative (MCSQI) and serves as its president. The goal of MCSQI is to improve cardiac surgery quality and outcomes for all patients in Maryland through data sharing and collaborative research.